Austin Schutz, Ph. D., is a visiting assistant professor of political science and international relations in LMU’s Bellarmine College of Liberal Arts and a current education ambassador for the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). Through this program, Schutz has explored active learning in his classes and helped students interact more with past and current political events.
The CFR Education Ambassador program is an academic-year-long program that gives participating educators access to workshops, resources, professional development activities, and collaboration with other educators of political science and international relations programs. Schutz participates in the program specifically for professors and administrators in higher education; these higher education institutions include community colleges, liberal arts colleges, doctorate-granting institutions, and more. Through virtual workshops, educators can discuss issues they are having in their classrooms and solutions to better the learning environment. Additionally, CFR creates simulations for educators to promote active learning, allowing educators to discuss how they implemented the simulations and how students responded to the interactive lessons.
Schutz has conducted a variety of simulations in his classes. In his International Organizations course, students participated in a United Nations Security Council simulation. At the time of the course, Israel and Hamas had just begun discussing ceasefire deals, so the students were tasked with drafting their own proposals. They were able to reenact the processes of debates, vetoes, and revisions, while learning about the procedures.
“The simulations have been really beneficial because students take ownership of their education, rather than passively receiving it— because you get out of it what you put in,” Schutz said. “And if it’s well designed, then students are really doing a lot, which means that when they apply their critical thinking skills to other situations that are analogous, they have these frames of reference. It’s become a central part of my teaching practice over the last year. Everybody accesses and retains information in different ways, so this is just a way to incorporate all of these different mediums through which people can acquire information in order to ensure that everybody has at least some access point for the content.”
After seeing the success of the simulations, Schutz has continued to implement more into his lessons. Students benefited from the critical thinking skills, and they have become more involved in current events, as they lived through situations vicariously in the simulations.
“When we did that simulation negotiating a ceasefire, students started following the UN Security Council, and right after we did [the simulation], another resolution got vetoed. I didn’t have to bring it up in class to let them know it happened. They were like, ‘did you see that there was another vetoed resolution?’ It’s been such a useful tool for closing achievement gaps because some of those exist when students don’t see the relevance to their lives. But then when you start doing stuff like this, it starts to feel more relevant,” said Schutz.
By participating in the CFR Education Ambassador program for higher education, Schutz has grown as a teacher through the workshops and collaboration, while his students have grown through active learning and their increased motivation to engage with current events. Even though he only participated in the program directly during the 2024-2025 academic year, Schutz has seen the considerable benefits the lessons have had on students and will continue to implement CFR’s resources into his classroom.